Imperious Sex! – Review Of Uncanny X-Men #8

Uncanny X-Men has come to the end of its second story arc in eight issues. Let us all throw up a rousing cheer of “meh”.

This arc has found the X-Men playing clean-up crew to a mess left by Psylocke and the other members of the mutant wetwork team, X-Force, which left a small town in outer most Mongolia Montana devastated and gave rise to an alien biosystem called Tabula Rasa. When I say “clean-up crew”, what I really mean is that Magneto (yes, for those of you not reading X-books and playing along at home, Magneto is currently an X-Man) figured out that Psylocke’s (who is also an X-Man) other team caused it. Cyclops (“Hi, my name is Scott Summers. I’m covered from head to toe in latex and appear to only have one eye!”), leader of the X-Men, has no idea what’s going on. As usual. Must be a day.

I said, back in October, that the one thing to come out of Schism/Regenesis would be me finally putting Uncanny back on my pull list after a ten year absence. Right now, I’m thinking that it’s about to come right the fuck back off again.

Fun fact – Tabula Rasa means “blank slate”, just like the heads of the pretty little porn stars Greg Land traces. Oh, and spoilers ahead.

Uncanny X-Men #8 wraps up the Tabula Rasa tale. Having, in the past few issues, stumbled upon the weird, alien world that is The Savage Land Tabula Rasa, met its strange inhabitants and enclosed them in a special dome to imprison them for their own good save them from our yellow sun’s rays, which give them some kind of fatal cancer, Scott’s team heads home to Utopia to debrief and get closure. What have we learned?

• For someone who has purportedly lost her soul, Magik has spent entirely too much time grinning from ear to ear like a cheerleader on Ecstasy.
• Intelligent lifeforms from other planets don’t think Earthlings are very bright.
• Emma Frost is still a bitch.
• As long as he can justify that the life form in question is a Queen, Namor doesn’t mind breaking off a piece of strange.
• However, Namor will not “Imperious Sex” Hope. Not only is she underage, more importantly, she’s a ginger. He has standards, you know.

Kieron Gillen has put together a storyline that makes this supposedly formidable team look like a bunch of soap opera divas. If his purpose was to advance the idea that Scott is a shitty leader, well, I already knew that. Otherwise, particularly because of Greg Land’s art, which I’ll get to in a minute, the interactions and vibes the other characters were throwing constantly came off as awkward and tense. Psylocke and Magneto alternated between “Come at me, bro” and, well, the other kind of “Come at me, bro”:

Greg Land gets bashed a lot on the internet for tracing his images, some of which are rumored to come from porn stills. Seriously. Here’s one of Santanna, traced from a Playboy Pam Anderson cover:

Note to Pam Anderson - when Greg Land can draw you more realistically as a cartoon character than you can play one in the movies, there's a problem.

So, when 16-17 year-old Hope Summers spends the entire run of this arc throwing herself, Lolita-like, at Namor, it becomes even more creepy when it dawns on you that Land could have traced her from a porn still. Or Miley Cyrus. Or both.

Just remember, Namor: 16 will get you 20, man. Just saying.

And, what was his inspiration for the alien sea queen Namor does actually hook up with? This?

Say it with me: "Hey, everybody! We're all gonna get laid!"

If I’m more interested in figuring out who Greg Land cribbed his figure art from than the actual story, then that’s a problem with the writing.

So, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to be jettisoning Uncanny X-Men from my pulls. But, that’s ok. It’s not like I’m never going to see these characters again. If you’re keeping track of the various X-Books in the Marvel 616 universe, some of these characters must be clones or in possession of personal teleportation technology. While the X-Team in this book – Cyclops, Psylocke, Magik, Colossus, Namor, Hope, Emma and Storm – are dealing with the Tabula Rasa issue, they are also, simultaneously, scattered around the globe in other books, fighting the good(ish) fight. Storm, for example, is an Avenger now. She’s in Avengers #22 helping to deal with Norman “Don’t Call Me Normy” Osborn. She and Colossus are also, somehow at exactly the same time, in Japan. Fighting assassins and vampires. Because that’s what you do in Japan, apparently. And, over in Generation Hope they’re all back in Utopia, where Hope is being ganged up on by everyone and about to learn the actual meaning of “crucified” because they’re tired of her mega-bitchery. Well, everyone but Scott. Did I mention he’s clueless? Oh, and Namor is in The Defenders.

These are all books that have come out within the last few weeks, all operating on different, seemingly unrelated, storylines. What’s the point of having all these different X-Books if your flagship title, Uncanny X-Men is going to suffer from lackluster writing and cut-and-paste art? Get your shit together, Marvel.